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Alvin Kersh
Alvin Kersh (played by James Pickens, Jr.) was an Assistant Director of the FBI. (TXF: "The Beginning") In 2000, he was promoted to Deputy Director. (TXF: "Within") History Early Career Kersh was once a military jet pilot and was sent to Vietnam during the Vietnam War. There, before night vision and fly-by-wire were commonly used by the military, he and fellow pilots would fly night sorties ten feet above the treetops at six hundred miles an hour. All he and the other pilots had was an idiot gauge and their wits. Some of the pilots claimed they only knew their altitude by the smell of the enemy's rice pots beneath them. (TXF: "Within") :The Vietnam War lasted from the late 1950s to 1975, placing these events within that period. Kersh's date of birth is unclear, although actor James Pickens, Jr. was born in 1954, so it seems likely that Kersh may have fought in Vietnam during the early 1970s, prior to the war's conclusion in 1975. Kersh joined the FBI prior to 1998, becoming an Assistant Director by that year and a member of the Office of Professional Review. (TXF: "The Beginning"; The X-Files Movie) :Kersh, as played by James Pickens, Jr., does not appear in ''The X-Files Movie but the film provides a source for the name "Office of Professional Review", subsequently abbreviated as "OPR" in episodes of the series. For information regarding a possible cameo appearance of Kersh in The X-Files Movie, see the Background Information section below.'' Supervising Mulder and Scully In 1998, Kersh attended an OPR hearing at which he sat with other high-ranking FBI officials, including the speaker at the proceeding, Assistant Director Maslin. Special Agents Fox Mulder, Dana Scully and Diana Fowley were also present. At AD Maslin's instruction, Kersh was given supervisory responsibility for Agents Mulder and Scully while they underwent an upcoming probationary period. The duration was intended to test whether Agent Mulder would comply with orders to cease all material association with the X-Files, as investigation of those cases had been assigned to Special Agents Fowley and Jeffrey Spender. (TXF: "The Beginning") Though Kersh assigned Mulder and Scully to conduct routine background checks on suspects possibly guilty of domestic terrorism in southern Idaho, the agents left that state without notifying him or seeking his permission to do so. (TXF: "Drive") After Mulder was taken hostage, Kersh contacted Scully at night, from his office on the third floor of the FBI's headquarters, and condescendingly asked how southern Idaho was. (TXF: "Drive", "Triangle") When Scully replied that she and Mulder had received news of a situation in Nevada which they had both strongly felt required their immediate attention, Kersh claimed he was eagerly awaiting her report on the matter and announced that agents of the Bureau's Las Vegas field office would be available to assist her in recovering her kidnapped partner. :"Triangle" establishes Kersh's office as being on the third floor of the FBI's headquarters. It is unclear when he was first provided with his office, though it first appears in "Drive". After Scully returned to the FBI's headquarters with Mulder, Kersh informed them of the expenses they had amassed, one of which was as a result of Mulder's efforts to keep his life-threateningly endangered captor, Patrick Garland Crump, alive. Kersh intended to bill Scully, however, instead of Mulder. Much to both agents' frustration, Kersh reassigned them to their previous task of conducting background checks, believing that the sooner they realized they were done investigating X-Files, the better for them both. (TXF: "Drive") while the Cigarette Smoking Man watches.]] Soon after, Kersh was visited in his office by both Scully, who desperately required some valuable information from him, and the Cigarette Smoking Man, the first of his two visitors. Though Scully was keen to leave when she saw the Cigarette Smoking Man there and dismissed her own need for information, Kersh took a note, on which an intelligence system was scribbled, from her hand before she did so. :It is unclear whether Kersh discovered the nature of the information on the note, only that the Cigarette Smoking Man did so. Along with the Cigarette Smoking Man, Kersh later met with Agent Spender, who had been directed by Scully to locate a 1939 luxury liner positioned near Bermuda. The three men were talking to each other on the same floor as Kersh's office when Scully, with a cell phone to her ear, emerged from an elevator that she quickly re-entered upon seeing them. Kersh and the other two men remained where they were and later once again saw Scully exit an elevator - this time, with Assistant Director Walter Skinner, who shouted at her with a warning to never ask him to break policy or protocol - before she re-entered the elevator. In fact, Scully required information to aid her search for Mulder, who had become lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Skinner had given her this information between the two times that she was seen exiting an elevator but, since he had been discouraged from having any contact with her, he had pretended that he was angered by her in an effort to fool Kersh and the other two men. (TXF: "Triangle") Scully and Mulder later visited Area 51 in Nevada, where government agent Morris Fletcher switched identities with Mulder, though their physical appearances remained unchanged. In the morning of the next day, Kersh received a phone call from the Pentagon demanding that the agents be reprimanded for trespassing on the top-secret military base. Kersh's relationship with "Mulder" immediately became less strained than the relationship he had shared with the real Mulder, as Morris Fletcher was keen to make a good impression and to follow orders. Kersh decided not to penalise the agents after "Mulder" apologised for Scully and himself disregarding Kersh's direct order to avoid any line of investigation pertaining to the X-Files. After Scully became puzzled by a phone call she had received from the real Mulder, however, she returned to Nevada, a fact that Kersh soon learned. He once again called her from his office, this time to warn her that, if she did not follow his every instruction, she need not bother returning from Nevada. Acting under Kersh's orders, Scully co-operated in a stratagem in which several soldiers arrested the real Mulder. (TXF: "Dreamland") Nevertheless, once she returned to the FBI's headquarters, Kersh dismissed her from the FBI on a two-week suspension without pay. Mulder and Morris Fletcher ultimately managed to return to their rightful bodies, but no-one involved in the incident retained any memory of the events that had since transpired. Scully even told Mulder that they had "slipped under Kersh's radar" and that their "little field trip to Nevada" had gone unnoticed. (TXF: "Dreamland II") Later, Kersh received a call from Wayne Weinsider, who complained that Mulder was harrassing him. Kersh reacted by calling Scully into his office and rebuking Mulder's behavior while she was there. When Scully contacted Mulder and asked how he wanted her to respond, he told her to relay false information that he was conducting a background check on someone. (TXF: "Terms of Endearment") In 1999, Kersh met Peyton Ritter, an agent from the FBI's New York office who had, while helping to update his office's case filing system, discovered several bizzare post mortem photographs each taken by New York police photographer Alfred Fellig. Kersh believed that Agent Ritter had a promising career ahead of him but warned him about Scully and Mulder. After once again calling Scully into his office, Kersh introduced her to Agent Ritter who, at the Assistant Director's instruction, described the specifics of the case to her and subsequently left the room. Kersh admitted he was keen to assign Scully to the case in the knowledge that it would provide more challenge to her than running background checks. Though she immediately offered to investigate the case with Mulder, Kersh ordered her to work with Agent Ritter instead. While consequently investigating Alfred Fellig, Agent Ritter sent Kersh frequent progress reports, which were mostly appreciative of Scully. However, after the agents began to disagree on whether Fellig was guilty or innocent of murder, Agent Ritter revealed to Scully that Kersh had warned him about her and Mulder, and threatened that, if she ultimately ruined his case, he would ensure that Kersh learned what had happened. Eventually, Alfred Fellig was killed by Agent Ritter, invalidating any argument concerning the photographer's innocence. (TXF: "Tithonus") After Scully and Mulder voluntarily investigated a case involving AD Skinner, the Assistant Director abruptly concluded their investigation by reminding them that they were to perform their duties "as directed by AD Kersh and only AD Kersh". (TXF: "S.R. 819") The agents were later indefinitely suspended by the FBI. .]] Kersh was saddened and extremely shocked when he learned that almost every member of the Syndicate, as well as members of their families (including Agent Spender's mother), had been burned to death at El Rico Air Force Base. He complied with a request by Agent Spender to hold a meeting in his office with Agents Mulder, Scully and Spender, as well as AD Skinner. At the meeting, Kersh exhibited considerable compassion for Agent Spender losing his mother and tried to determine an explanation for the deaths. Kersh was persuaded by Spender to realize that Scully, to an extent, and Mulder could perhaps help explain the deaths and that they could be valuable sources of information, even if occassionally cryptic. (TXF: "One Son") After Agent Spender packed up his office, where the X-Files were stored, in the belief that he had mistakenly been responsible for Scully and Mulder being suspended from the FBI, the agents were reassigned to the X-Files, ending Kersh's tenure as their supervisor. (TXF: "One Son", "Arcadia") He was replaced by AD Skinner. (TXF: "Arcadia") Acting as Deputy Director In 2000, Kersh was appointed a Deputy Director's position in the FBI, necessitating that he be moved to a new office and giving him executive powers not only over FBI Agents but also AD Skinner. As Mulder had recently gone missing in Bellefleur, Oregon, Kersh organized a manhunt for him conducted by an FBI task force. He chose to assign Special Agent John Doggett as the task force leader. Kersh constantly oversaw the manhunt from his office, once warning Scully and AD Skinner - who were convinced that Mulder had been abducted by a UFO in Bellefleur - that they would lose their jobs if they were responsible for any information about aliens or alien abductions becoming public. Skinner did admit, while Agent Doggett was taking a statement from both him and Scully in regards to Mulder's disappearance, that he had witnessed Mulder's abduction but Doggett, at Scully's request, did not report Skinner's account and Kersh consequently never learned of it. Despite claiming at one point that he was only after "the truth", Kersh's motives were considered suspect by both Skinner and, later, Doggett; they both believed that the new Deputy Director had intentionally set Doggett up to fail, as the only way he would accomplish his task would be to accept the truth that Mulder had been abducted, though Kersh would ruin him if he put any information about aliens or UFOs in a report he was to submit. After Doggett nevertheless included accounts of several encounters with an alien bounty hunter in his report, Kersh claimed that he believed the report was highly doubtful and likened it to "a piece of pot-boiled science fiction". He told Doggett not to return until he had some answers. Doggett was subsequently assigned to the X-Files, partnered with Agent Scully who was already assigned to those cases. (TXF: "Within", "Without") :It is not clearly established that Kersh was responsible for Doggett's assignment to the X-Files, though it does seem probable. :Kersh studies several photographs at the end of "Without", which he also does at the end of "One Son". After every member of a religious cult, except for the leader, was murdered as well as FBI Agents James Leeds and Angus Stedman - who had both been conducting stake-out on the cult's leader, Kersh held a meeting in his office that Skinner, Doggett, another agent and Gene Crane - an agent who had been a member of Doggett's task force - also attended. Kersh and the other FBI members studied the history of the cult leader, Anthony Tipet, but the Deputy Director was frustrated that there was no way to explain the complete lack of forensic evidence without accepting the belief that the cult leader had somehow indeed reached a higher plane, a theory that Kersh characterized as preposterous. He complained that neither Doggett nor Scully was providing him with conclusions before ending the meeting. (TXF: "Via Negativa") Relationships Adherents Kersh's Assistant Main article: Kersh's Assistant Fox Mulder Main article: Fox Mulder Dana Scully Main article: Dana Scully John Doggett Main article: John Doggett Monica Reyes Main article: Monica Reyes Colleagues "Cigarette Smoking Man" Main article: Cigarette Smoking Man Walter Skinner Main article: Walter Skinner Brad Follmer Main article: Brad Follmer "Toothpick Man" Main article: Toothpick Man Other Lives Background Information Alvin Kersh was named after the characters Dr. Kersh and Anton Kersh from Vampire Circus, one of Chris Carter's favorite movies. One of several FBI officials at the Office of Professional Review hearings in The X-Files Movie looks suspiciously like Kersh and it is not entirely clear whether the character is meant to be Kersh or another mustached African-American male member of OPR. Appearances *TXF: **"The Beginning" (Season 6) **"Drive" **"Triangle" **"Dreamland" **"Tithonus" **"One Son" **"Within" (Season 8) **"Without" **"Via Negativa" **"DeadAlive" **"Three Words" **"Vienen" **"Existence" **"Nothing Important Happened Today" (Season 9) **"Nothing Important Happened Today II" **"John Doe" **"Provenance" **"Providence" **"The Truth" Additional References *TXF: **"Dreamland II" (Season 6) **"Terms of Endearment" **"S.R. 819" **"Alone" (Season 8) **"Sunshine Days" (Season 9) Kersh, Alvin